Don't forget: today — 12/12/12 — is the last repetitive date you'll see in your life, unless you are very young and prone to longevity. Which means it's also the last time you'll see content-free fluff pieces seeking to assign some kind of meaning to the arbitrary assemblage of numbers spewed out by our latest pitiful attempt at measuring out the blank incoherence of time. New York magazine's Stefan Becket turned up the New York Times article from the last time this happened, "12-12-12: That's To-day, and It's a Long Time Till Another Strange Date Line," and it's a masterpiece of word-padding form:

The Times was lucky that in 1912 the date fell on a Thursday, and its writers could push their word counts with an extra paragraph about Friday the 13th. Current writers, offered no such opportunity, will have to end their fluff pieces early and abruptly.